Eames and Bradley are likely to suggest a three- to five-strong Legacy Commission with an international chairman and separate divisions to deal with truth recovery and investigation. The body would sit for a fixed period  but no more than five years, it is hoped  and it will have the power to conduct hearings in private. If a prosecution seems impossible, then victims will have the option of authorising an offer of immunity to perpetrators who are prepared to own up about what happened.

A similar tactic was used when paramilitaries were guaranteed that decommissioned weapons could not be used as evidence for their prosecution. Later, special legislation was passed in London and Dublin offering immunity to those who gave information about the burial places of the disappeared. The basic formula of trading the hope of justice for information is not a new one.

The new body needs sticks as well as carrots, though. It should have powers to penalise those who refuse to co-operate, both by naming and shaming and by imposing penalties for contempt.

A victim-centred approach is welcome but victims and perpetrators are not always distinct categories and the whole of society is, to some degree, both victim and aggressor. Not having a hierarchy of victims means greater openness than Eames and Bradley may be ready for. Bradley, for instance, has suggested society is not ready for the truth. He gave the example of a mother mourning her son as a paramilitary martyr without knowing that he was also an informer.

There are no easy choices or pat solutions, but hard cases make bad laws. A system of private conversations after which information is passed on only where it is affirming and comforting would be a travesty of truth recovery. Such a sanitised, fairy-tale version of reality would, in the long term, perpetuate prejudice and division. We need an ambitious scheme to publish information that is now withheld. Reconciliation cannot be built on lies or half-truths. Even a bad bank has to settle its debts some day.

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We await the details but its is very hard to believe that NI society, especially victims however defined, can bear the weight of responsibility being imposed on them. Far better to work towards giving legal form to the real situation, that over a decade since the GFA, the days of prosecution for members of associated paramilitary organisations is over. To pretend otherwise amounts to perpetrating a deceit.

cynic

Ah yes. A Truth Commission. But who’s truth? How will we get that truth? From everyone? How will it test the blatant lies? And who will end up named and shamed?

So let’s start off with a few questions it might have to answer:-

Like who was and who wasn’t in the IRA? Who was and wasn’t on the Army Council directing the terror?

Who authorised and directed incidents like the murder of Jean McConville and the bombing of La Mon?

Who was / wasn’t an informant?

And just in case the passage of time is helping memories fade, let’s try some more up to date issues like:-

Who killed Robert McCartney?

Who witheld information on that murder from the Police? (Will the Commission allow the toilet defence?)

Who killed Paul Quinn? Why?

Now, does anyone seriously think we will ever get honest open answers to any of those questions? If not, what’s it all for?

IJP

Where would justice come in?

Exactly.

We’ve taken a dangerous track away from justice for the sake of political expedience for some time now – perhaps justifiably so.

But, as noted, a bad bank has to settle its debts some time.

There is no justice, for example, in the DUP and SF running the country…